An online education opportunity exclusively for Harvard alumni.

Poetry in America with Elisa New

Set in the historic setting of Harvard and its environs - a place that, coincidentally, is where the history of American poetry began, Elisa New’s Poetry in America reveals that the histories of American poetry and Harvard University run in parallel and also interlacing streams.

Professor New throws open the doors of Harvard University's great resources. Visit Houghton Library, where the manuscripts of Emily Dickinson, among many other poets, are held. Follow in the footsteps of Marianne Moore, visiting Harvard's Museum of Natural History in order to understand what she meant when she wrote in a poem that “superior people never need to be shown Longfellow's grave or the glass flowers at Harvard.” Wander Harvard Yard underneath the trees John Ashbery may have had in mind when he wrote his first book, Some Trees.

Treating individual figures major poetic movements and probing the many uses of poetry across changing times Professor New illustrates a historical time line for the American poetic tradition while also giving students tools to approach any poetic tradition.

Faculty

Elisa New,Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature

Elisa New teaches classic American literature from Anne Bradstreet through Marilynne Robinson and from the Puritans to the present day. She is the author of The Regenerate Lyric: Theology and Innovation in American Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 1992) The Lines Eye: Poetic Experience, American Sight (Harvard University Press, 1999) Jacob's Cane: A Jewish Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore (2009). She also has two books forthcoming from Wiley-Blackwell, New England Beyond Criticism: In Defense of America's First Literature (2014) and How To Read American Poetry (2015).